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How do you feel about the word ‘interfaith?’ Does that exclude you?
Good question. The term does naturally presuppose some manner of godly faith (rather than, say, a naturalistic “faith” that the rules of nature operate regularly throughout the universe). But insofar as atheists and agnostics have views about particular god beliefs, any interfaith dialogue can get additional perspectives from us.
As I have mentioned, the word atheist has broader meanings, and before the Enlightenment the term was regularly used to indicate non-belief in a particular faith (making disbelief in Zeus, for instance, sufficient to label one an atheist from that perspective). So, insofar as every person of faith is somebody else’s atheist by that older definition, full-blown atheists and agnostics can sit at the interfaith table just as easily (provided everyone keeps their sense of humor and civility).
All of this was addressed in the New Testament about 1950 years ago. We are in the last days now, and the number of people who choose to scoff, will only increase.
“To begin with, you must know and understand this, that scoffers (mockers) will come in the last days with scoffing, [people who] walk after their own fleshly desires” (2 Peter 3:3)
“This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.” (2 Timothy 3:1)
“Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.” (2 Timothy 3:7)
All bible verses are from the Amplified Bible.
Mark…respectfully….you quote the bible as it supports your own confirmation bias. In fact Jesus said the end times would come withing the life times of the original Apostles. Matt. 16:28, Luke 9:27 and Mark 9:1 all state that “not all of you will taste of death before before they see the kingdom of God.”
The “End Times” have been “imminent” since the time of Jesus and there have been many predictions made, dates given, and alarms sounded. Yet nothing has ever come of it (except some people have lost everything, sects have split apart when predictions failed, and some people finally just said ‘this is nuts’ and entered the world of reason. I see no evidence whatever that any such event will ever take place. My ‘fleshly desires’ amount to doing right by others and causing the least harm in decisions that must cause some harm. Of course my first preference would be to cause no harm at all but good instead.
Relax Mark. Your demise a the hand of your deity is NOT imminent….or even likely from all the evidence I have ever seen.
Hey, Jim, I checked your references and it is well known among bible scholars that the fulfillment of that statement comes directly after and is quite intuitive especially in the the Mark passage, in Jesus transfiguration, a glimpse into His veiled power, so I wouldn’t put too much weight on your position on that one. Mark would have done better to quote the verses following his which state that scoffers will say, “where is the promise of His coming, all things continue on as they always have.” (Sound familiar?) and later, ” to God a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like a day.” And, ” He’s not slow as we count slowness, but patient towards us so that we wouldn’t perish but repent” these are my own paraphrases but they’re true to the statements. So in a way, Jim, your own statements corroborate the truth of scripture.
A couple more thoughts, Jesus return will definitely not be the demise of any born again Christian only of rejectors and phony Christians. Also, one of the best and hardest to refute pieces of evidence of conservative eschatology is the re-gathering of Israel back into the land and the the reaction of the rest of the world to that reality. A literal historical/grammatical hermeneutic handles it quite nicely.
Dennis….I knew we would cross paths again. I suspect both you and your biblical scholars are trying to semantically dance around a very specific statement which is Luke 9:27 “But I tell you of a truth, there be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the kingdom of God.” This does not say anything about transfiguration. It says that the second coming will happen within the lifetime of some that are listening to Jesus at that point. It does not matter how long your deity’s “day” is. There is not reference to an ambiguous time frame. The fact of the matter is all those listening to Jesus at that time are dead. They did not live to see the kingdom of God happen on earth as Jesus stated. Of course “bible scholars” semantically tap dance around such statements because it is very damaging to your belief the Jesus is infallable. I don’t see my statements as supporting your assertions Dennis. However you are right….Israel does exist now…and if they don’t quit ticking off their neighbors and try and get along that armageddon thing just might happen.
I can’t agree that the statement ,”see the kingdom of God”, equals Jesus second coming. That is a stretch. There is way too much other scripture involved to make that your proof statement. II Peter 1:16-18 also has the apostle Peter giving a first hand account of Jesus transfiguration event, approved by God the Father, and referred to in verse 16 as, “the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ”. So if you must see a “coming” of Jesus Christ to be satisfied this seems more than enough to take it out of the failed prophecy catagory.
Where In Chapter 11 of Romans does it say that a group of Jewish people will be given a land for permanent occupation and that land and people are the current state of Israel? Paul, using an awkward metaphor of olive tree cultivation, talks of some sects of Judaism being broken off (by worshiping other gods) only to make room for some gentiles to be grafted on to a tree, which thrives because of its strong roots, or spiritual traditions (what Paul was thinking more important than the practices such as circumcision). Because Paul believed in grace being a gift given to all at the end of the old age and the coming of the new, a time when the roots will support all humanity, then the fallen off Jews will also be part of those who feed off those roots. That is only logical: all get grace, and “all” means “all”, even fallen Jews. By the dictates of Justice on our hearts and simple minds, all will have their land, not necessarily the land of the Palestinians stolen by the current occupiers,. And I reject the use of the Bible to justify the demonization of people who don’t fit into this radical , rather new , interpretation of the bible to support ones agreement with unjust, un loving ways of living in a world that needs justice before we can have peace. It is to further a horrible view of God, one I could not accept. By the way, did you hear of the unarmed Palestinian youths who were murdered by Israeli officers recently for saying their piece, or the 1500 olive trees in a Palestinian orchard that were bulldozed, preparing for more expropriation of Palestinian lands for more occupation be Israeli settlers? Too much like the genocide we visited on the Indian nations. Is that what fundamentalists are saying I have to accept before I am saved and get to go to their heaven? I’d rather live in central L.A.
Jim, agree with your history of the meaning of the terms before and after the enlightenment., but think yo set up a straw dog about your starting presupposition about the meaning of ‘interfaith’ Since the basic meaning of faith, in ordinary language, is ‘hope’, why does it have to be “Godly”? As an agnostic, I have a naturalistic hope about much of what I do or espouse. I hope that we can come together soon enough under a naturalistic enlightenment to prevent the destruction of our environment and cultures.
Goodly or ungodly, faith is faith. My faith is different from Marks, which is pre-enlightenment I base my faith on empirical observation, etc., etc. He bases his on eschatological mythos and his imaginations loosely formed out of his experience. I think it is very valuable for both of us to respectfully discuss the source and implications of our ideas, no matter whether or not I, you, or he might regard them as “Godly”.
I don’t agree on the straw dog tag, but the point is a valid one: terms like faith and belief carry connotations, but that doesn’t prevent us from using them. This bumps directly into the decidable/undecidable issue I really must get to in the oft-promised NOMA discussion.
As for the impending Last Days, that has been a very persistant coming attraction for all of those centuries, and I think will continue to be a coming attraction for as many millennia after us as you care to imagine. Most of the early Christian church martyrs were expecting Jesus to return within their lifetimes to oust Rome and reestablish the Kingdom of Israel as the Messiah was supposed to. That didn’t happen, which counts as a failed prophecy just as much as the non-even of Nostradamus’ 1999 cataclysm. And though Augustine and others have tried to distance the doctrine from the eschatological promise there, belief in it remains strong and undeterred by centuries of this event continuing to not occur.
Believers in the End Times should not let their insurance policies or utility bills lapse.
Romans 11 is an amazing chapter in which Paul, moved by the Holy Spirit, explained exactly what is going on in God’s plan today. He said that Israel, who has never been utterly rejected by God, has been hardened against accepting Jesus Christ as their messiah Until the last Gentile has been saved and placed into his church. At that point, still future, God will resume the fulfillment of His promise to give a portion or remnant of Israel new forgiven hearts and permanent possession of the land of Israel forever. No failed prophecies, no unfulfilled promises, just God contolling the exact timing of world events. Can’t be denied, just rebelled against.
If this was the first time that the End Times had come up in Christian history, that “scoffers” issue would be more relevant, but the scoffers have been scoffing now for nearly 2000 years and the anti-scoffers are the ones passing on without the Second Coming taking place to interrupt the flow. I am sure that 500 or even 5000 or maybe even 50,000 years from now, if humanity and our culture have persisted all that far, there will be scoffers still pointing out the non-occurrence of the parousia, and confident faithful shaking their heads in dismay at the unwillingness of the scoffer to see what they so clearly can. Believers in Nostradamus prophecies have nothing on Christianity when it comes to confident affirmations despite a record of history to the contrary.
Jim, see my couple comments to the other Jim above regarding the 2k delay, and also the scoffer angle. The difference between now and all the other date settings, which I would never do, by the way, is that Israel is back in the land just as so many bible passages have spoken of. The technology for world wide monetary and political control are now in place, in contrast to times past, not to mention the global turmoil which will unwittingly cry out for such control, at least the earth- dwellers will.
But again, Israel’s re-gathering is hard to dismiss, it’s unique in the history of the world and agrees with bible prophecy.
The re-emergence of Israel is an excellent example of how dangerous religion can be. Israel’s re-emergence is a self-fulfilling prophesy in which people of faith have jiggered political processes in order to make reality conform to their crazy-talk.
What is really terrifying about all this is that global apocalypse is a natural follow-up act for the conservative religious ideologues who work so hard to make these bad things happen. The formation of Israel was a horrible mistake. I only hope it is not one that ends global civilization.
Paul,I would agree to the extent that we are referring to the Roman Catholic Church and Islam. The persecution of bible believing Christians inflicted by those two groups is well documented. To twist that against Israel is totally dis-ingenuous given the actual facts of the situation. I guess it’s too much to ask that the Jews be allowed to return to that tiny sliver of land that is their home without the whole world having a hissy-fit. And to say that anyone besides God alone could “jigger” these events into history is also quite naive, to say the least.
The God of the bible has spoken of these events in so many places in scripture that to call it “jiggered” or a coincidence would totally defy the statistical analysis for one thing. It would also make God out to be a liar and a promise breaker for Him not to restore Israel, which He obviously is not. He always keeps His promises, and Jesus will return for the true believing church, in the fulfillment of one of those. If you are reading this, please consider whether you are ready for that approaching event.
Paul, the last line is intended for whoever might be reading this thread, not you in particular, although my heart would be for you as well.
I think most of the replies misconstrue the idea of “end time”, taking the plural. THe singular, and more correct, according to linguistic scholars, use the singular, “the end time” which refers not to the end of the world, but the end of an age, such as the industrial age. Most writers back then were talking of the end of Roman colonialism, Hellenistic influence, or the endof having a destroyed temple. A few were escatological myth makers, using very dramatic images used by some more extreme sects. Also, it is debatable if Jesus really said that he would return, or that there would be an Armageddon like ending. Such a statement doesn’t fit his NEW Kingdom statements or ethos. Remember, those who wrote the quoted texts were writing as or after the temple was being destroyed, some 40 years after the assassination of Jesus, and every writer seems to have had a different agenda. The only writings before these that we have were by Paul, who doesn’t talk about these issues. He was more concerned with laws and faith and resurrection, and had his Hellenistic and anti pure Jew biases.
Tom,
I wouldn’t mind seeing a few scriptures to back up all your dismissals of scripture and I would respectfully disagree, that there are many places that the context would demand end time or times meaning, just as you say, the end of an age, in this case the end of the church age. Most deniers do so on the basis of rejection of the truth of scripture, as you do, Tom. That’s your choice, but sorry, you can’t deny what the bible actually says. I’ll refrain from posting a laundry list of scriptures that support the actual literal bodily return of Jesus Christ to destroy all arrogant unbelieving men and women, and save all true believers, but there have been thousands of scholarly volumes detailing it all right out of scripture.
Sorry, not on Twitter, since I think that venue is prone to too much glib comments rather than more thoughtful responses. Glad you find the discussions here of interest, of course, and feel free to recommend the site to your friends on Twitter or elsewhere.
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All my responses to Ask an Atheist are composed on the spot, though some of my regular postings do draw on previous arguments I’ve proposed (like the NOMA piece). I don’t bog down on technical citation in these short items, though if I quote someone or allude to a specific reference book or article, that source will be noted. I have been thinking about these issues for some time, and have a mite of background references to draw on, so its not a shock that I can express what I think on a specific question without having to retire to a cave for lengthy cerebration first.
My onject is to explain what I think and why I do so, in as clear a way as possible.